Chapter 1 - Joseph Binbin Mauvant

• The first chapter of the book begins in the rural mountains of Haiti; Joseph Binbin Mauvant, Mama Lola's great grandfather, disappears.

• The short, fictitious story told here is one of Mama Lola's family lore and held as historical truth.

• Manman Marasa, the wife of Mauvant, is going about her usual morning business of breakfast and tending to children.

• Most of the compound's women have made the long journey down the mountain to the market.
• Mauvant dresses and assumes his usual post beneath the cottonsilk tree, where he regularly sits sipping his special rum mixture and doling out medicine and advice.

• Mauvant is what they call a "franginen" or a true African who has the spirits "on him" always.

• All morning Mauvant is muttering that he is "going" but no one pays him much attention.